


Cracked Under Pressure

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Bullying, Creating Enemies, Gen, Origins of Evil, Pressure, Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 11:24:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18342698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Ralon cracks under the pressure of the pages' wing.





	Cracked Under Pressure

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Villains Week Event as part of the Free for All at Goldenlake. 
> 
> I took the liberty of tinkering with the timeline slightly to make this story work. Hopefully this doesn't diminish anyone's enjoyment.

Cracked under Pressure

“I’ll tell you what I told your oldest brother before he began page training.” Father had to pause in helping to unpack Ralon’s belongings—it stung Ralon’s pride that they didn’t have enough servants to handle the unpacking because it seemed to place him on a lower rung of the social ladder in the pages’ wing despite his family name being in the perfectly respectable Book of Silver—to fix his good eye on Ralon. 

The other eye, lost to a sharp Gallan sword in one of the Old King’s wars, was hidden beneath a black patch that made him look like a pirate. Once Ralon had delighted in that roguish resemblance but now it only made him burn with anger at how his father had bled for Tortall and received no reward in lands or titles from the Crown in recognition of his services. During the Old King’s reign had been too filled with maimed heroes to reward all their sacrifices as the laws of fealty demanded, a fact that poisoned Ralon against the false promises of fealty to a Crown that seemed to forever take and never give. 

“Pay attention.” Father’s lone eye was still strong enough to detect whenever Ralon’s mind wandered. Ralon straightened and assumed a rapt expression as his father went on, “I expect you’ll get in tussles with the other pages. That’s boys being boys but you must never tell on another page you’ve fought with the way you used to tattle on your brothers when they beat on you. You must instead say you fell down, understand?” 

“You mean I should lie?” Ralon scowled at the reference to his tendency to tattle as he slammed an empty traveling chest shut. 

“No.” Father shook his head as he returned to unpacking. “I mean you should follow tradition and learn when to keep your mouth closed. Those are the two main virtues page training is designed to teach you. If you don’t think you can live by those rules, you can become a Mithran monk instead. Many latter-born sons purse that honorable path of devotion to Mithros.” 

“I don’t want to be Mithran priest.” Ralon’s jaw clenched with determination not to follow in the footsteps of his second oldest brother who had become a priest in the City of the Gods. 

“Then do as I say.” Father again paused in unpacking. This time, he gripped Ralon’s shoulders in half-command and half-reassurance. “You’ll be accepted by the other boys if you do and make many friends at the palace.” 

Ralon tried to follow his father’s advice—not admitting to the imposing Duke Gareth that he had been fighting even when the biggest bullies among the older boys pounded into him—but he made no friends, not even among the lads nearest his age. It was, he thought, just his luck that the boys closest to him in age were almost all from the wealthiest and oldest families in the realm—Goldenlake, Naxen, Nond—who easily forged friendships with the Crown Prince who ruled the pages’ wing as if it were his unquestionable birthright. 

Ralon’s family name might have been respectable enough to associate with such blue-blooded company—after all, the Contes were a Book of Silver family too no matter how they tried to rewrite history so the rest of the realm would forget their lack of the highest pedigree—but his fief’s finances made that embarrassingly impossible. Malven was in the dry hill country where an acre of land was more likely to produce a handful of dust than a bushel of wheat. As it was, his classmates were friendly to him without being his friend. 

He was lonely, bruised from the practice courts, and sweating from running what felt like a hundred dishes out to the noble Duke Gareth had assigned him to serve every night at dinner when the prince nudged him in an effort to push past him in the line for their own suppers in the pages’ dining hall. 

Normally he would have silently submitted to Prince Jonathan’s perpetual assumption that he should be allowed to do everything first by virtue of his rank, but tonight Ralon’s temper flared hot as a blacksmith’s iron, and he shoved the prince back. They continued to trade blows that knocked platters heaped with food and pitchers almost overflowing with juice to the floor that became increasingly slippery as the battle waged on between Ralon and Prince Jonathan. 

Everything that followed happened in a flurry of fists that somehow caused Ralon to collapse to the floor in a tangle of limbs that included his own as well as the Crown Prince’s. His eyes were so blackened that he didn’t see Duke Gareth appear in the doorway but he could hear the training master’s tone, ringing as a bell summoning worshippers to service, announcing that instead of eating dinner tonight the pages could clean up the mess they had made. 

Ralon’s eyes weren’t so blackened that he couldn’t see the bitter glares the rest of the pages riveted on him—not the prince who had started the squabble, of course, because they never would have dared to blame royalty. Their stomachs had to be rumbling as much as his was, and he knew why they were staring at him like hungry wolves who would eat him alive if they could…

If his fellow pages were wolves who would eat him alive if they could, Duke Gareth was a vulture who swooped in to pick at his rotting carcass. 

“Would you care to explain how you ended up with a pair of black eyes?” Duke Gareth arched an eyebrow at Ralon the next morning after summoning him out of history class. 

“I fought with Prince Jonathan, Your Grace.” Ralon was too tired to lie to Duke Gareth when the training master had witnessed the truth. “He blackened both my eyes.” 

For a beat of his racing heart, Ralon almost believed that it was worth it to shatter the code of suffering in silence that was expected to govern his life in the pages’ wing just to behold the surprised look that broke across Duke Gareth’s face. Then the harshest expression Ralon had ever seen—not anger or even disapproval but cold contempt that sent shivers up Ralon’s spine—flickered across the training master’s face before a stern mask slipped into place again. 

“I see.” Duke Gareth’s lips were thin, and Ralon decided that the training master must hate him for daring to tell the truth about his insufferably arrogant nephew. “You can spend your free time for a week mucking out the stables.” 

“Yes, sir.” Ralon bowed while wishing with a fervor that dizzied him that the prince would receive the same sentence. 

He regretted this wish that evening as he and the prince were mucking out the stables. 

“You told Duke Gareth we fought,” Prince Jonathan hissed like a serpent in Ralon’s ear. 

“I only told him the truth.” Ralon wrinkled his nose in a feeble defense against the stench of the manure he was cruelly required to shovel. “Perhaps you shouldn’t act in a way that you’re ashamed of when the truth comes out to your uncle.” 

“I’m not ashamed of anything except that I wasted my breath talking to you.” Prince Jonathan’s voice was cut with the icy shards in his blue eyes. “Don’t ever talk to me again, Malven. That’s a royal command.” 

After that royal command, Ralon was an outcast among his peers. When he asked Raoul, who had once been willing to joke with him between classes, to share the wisecrack that had him and Francis laughing so hard their ribs risked cracking, Raoul hadn’t answered him but instead asked Francis in a tone cool as a December wind, “Do you hear something, Francis?” 

“I hear nothing.” Quiet Francis stared into space rather than glance at Ralon, following in Raoul’s wake as Raoul pushed past Ralon in the crowded hallway, hurrying to their mathematics lesson. 

Lunch was no better. Gary dumped a pile of books and papers on a vacant seat beside him when Ralon searched for one. Even in the evening, his loneliness didn’t ease. Alex, who had become friends with the prince through Gary, refused to assist Ralon with mathematics in exchange for aid in other subjects. 

All of his days in the pages’ wing were equally lonely. Sometimes he was taunted but mostly he was ignored and that was infinitely more painful to his pride. 

He didn’t know if his classmates were ignoring him because the prince had issued another royal command to that effect, and he was too nervous to chance the complete rejection that might come with asking anyone. Instead he took to bullying every new arrival in the pages’ wing in the hope that one would crack under the pressure as he had and admit the forbidden truth to Duke Gareth but none of them ever did. He remained alone and scorned in the pages’ wing, its black sheep, until the day he left in disgrace with not a friend to wave farewell to him.


End file.
